


A Little Death

by wordsliketeeth



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Blood, Character Death, Character Study, Depression, Drinking, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Masochism, Mental Health Issues, Multi, One-sided Aomine Daiki/Kise Ryouta, Stranger Sex, Strangulation, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unprotected Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:42:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25826857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsliketeeth/pseuds/wordsliketeeth
Summary: It was the one thing he promised himself when he started to visit the underbelly of Tokyo—the one thing that was to be kept off-limits—but at the present, Kise can't even begin to count how many kisses he's shared with strangers.
Relationships: Kise Ryouta/Other(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	A Little Death

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains major character death and possible triggers. Please mind the tags.

Kise is tired of standing on the shore, waving at the big ships just to have them pass him by. He feels small, like he's standing at the bottom of the world and all he wants is to be carried away by the salty sea. The water moves beneath him and dampens his feet, and he dreams for the waves to pull him in but they never do.

He's tired of feeling dead inside. He's drained from hiding the person he truly is, fatigued down to his bones from painting a disguise over the _character_ he doesn't even know anymore—and that's all he is: a parody, a cartoon, a personification of the image people have drawn him in.

He digs a motel key out of his pocket and fits it into a timeworn lock that groans with age when he works the mechanism loose. He knows that someone is waiting for him on the other side of the chipped and damaged pine—only he doesn't know _who_ that person is. But he wants it that way. After a deep and unnecessary breath, he pushes open the door and slips inside, unsurprised when the door's chain lock jangles and slides to close behind him.

The room smells musty, reminding him of weathered photographs and mildewed carpet, but it imbues him with a sense of relief. He wants this to be dirty. He doesn't believe that he's worthy of being clean when he's been chasing polluted skies and shamelessly exploring their contaminated depths. He can't recall the last time his skin was unblemished, when he was something other than a slaveless chain or when he wasn't sick and he still maintained some grain of sanity.

When this first started, Kise believed that if he gave away his body then just _maybe_ he could free his soul. But that theory has long since died. It perished with the ideology that money is the key to happiness and the theory that his good looks could carry the burdens of his despair. It doesn't matter what he believes in anymore, at any rate. There's no point in trying to fly when your wings have been torn in half. Now, all he wants is for someone to break him. He wants to feel something in all of this nothingness and he needs it to _hurt_.

Kise doesn't hesitate to do what he's told when it's demanded of him. He sheds his clothes and watches his silhouette dance on the wall as he removes layer after layer of the designer clothing that used to bring him joy. He feels the hard line of nails bite into his skin and the slide of slick teeth drag over the sharp angle of his shoulder. Cool hands grab at his overworked body, too thin and sallow, an unhealthy pallor that accentuates the dark circles beneath his tired eyes. The cursive ink that crawls up his arm is bright in contrast to his once golden skin and it reads: _don't forget who you are_. Kise scoffs to himself—it's almost insulting now.

Kise has seen things that no one else should know. He's seen where the face of night looked into the palace from the sea and it's the opposite of everything he expected to be. Dreams are nothing more than nightmares in disguise and ambition is as promising as the drugs he injects into his veins.

He arches his back and feels his spine protest the motion as a stranger takes him from behind. He buries his face in the pillow in front of him and lets the oily stain of smoke and cheap perfume fill his nostrils. It burns the back of his throat and he uses the urge to cough as an excuse to bite down on his bottom lip until blood strains the white edges of his teeth.

There's a knock on the door that echoes in the dim of the night but it goes ignored. Kise feels fingers slip through his honeyed strands before going tight enough to send pain flaring up the line of his scalp. He cranes his neck to look over his shoulder, hating himself when he accepts the hungry lips of another. It was the one thing he promised himself when he started to visit the underbelly of Tokyo—the one thing that was to be kept off-limits—but at the present, Kise can't even begin to count how many kisses he's shared with strangers.

“Touch me,” Kise whispers, his tone stretching the plea over keening desperation. He wants more: _more_ sex, _more_ skin, _more_ pain. He's hungrier than he's been in days, starved for affection, and deprived of suffering. His fingers catch on the sheets and get lost to the shadows, twisting and aching like a metaphor of the touch he craves more than sustenance.

Kise feels like a slow dying flower, withered and torn at the edges by the time the exchange comes to an end. His body spasms and his extremities thrum from strain but he relishes the ache. He only wishes that he could push the pain down into his bones to keep it there as a keepsake, a reminder that this is what he deserves.

He doesn't bother washing the blood from his body, doesn't inconvenience himself with the viscous stain of arousal that sticks to his skin. He feels abused and humiliated and less than human. He feels as used up and repulsive as he should, which is as much as he wants to. It's what he desires, what he craves.

He's fed up with perfection, broken-down and weary from trying so hard to be flawless. He wants to shatter his image, wants to break all semblance of purity and frank eagerness that has shrouded him for so many years. He yearns for it to disappear, to vanish like an illusion, but things are never so simple when it comes to what he wants. Aomine taught him that when he left for the States without so much as a goodbye.

The next patron enters the room, and no sooner than Kise can chase the darkness through the cracks, cold glass is being pressed into his trembling hands. It's too late to go back, too late for reservations, so Kise presses his lips to the cloudy tumbler and tosses his head back. The liquid burns his throat and spreads through his empty stomach like a summer storm. For a moment, he thinks he's going to be sick but the feeling passes and allows him to move freely.

Kise curses his breathing as he dances to the music that plays inside of his head. His movements are slow and calculated but he feels more alive now than he did twenty minutes ago. He knows it's the alcohol, knows that whatever he's been given is strong and quick to work on the bile in his stomach. Heat floods his veins and he feels empowered, thinks that if he had the chance he could touch every soul in the world with his broken smile.

Kise wonders when he became so cold, so ashamed, when he became this shell of the person he used to be. He's lost his feelings and his faith and he thinks that they left around the same time that his friends did. He feels so lost and numb that he wonders if he's paralyzed, his body rooted to the filthy carpet beneath his feet. He wonders if he'll die here, in this two-bit motel, alone and without a name.

He snatches the bottle of liquor out of the gnarled hand that belongs to his guest and presses it to his lips. The glass clicks against his teeth and the split in his lip burns like the fire in his lungs. He drinks until he's satisfied, the tumbler he held before lost to the monsters beneath the bed. He returns the bottle when its contents are nearly empty and kisses the unknown man like he's begging for life.

The air around him feels like a cage and Kise thinks that he might be choking. He withdraws from the kiss and knots his hands in the stranger's linen shirt, his heart aching with emotion he doesn't want to acknowledge.

“Please,” he says, his voice breaking under the weight of longing. “Make me feel _something_. I don't care what you do to me. Just make me feel like I'm alive again.” He knows that he doesn't need to play on the heartstrings of this man, knows that it won't matter, that _he_ doesn't matter, but he still wears an expression of put-on innocence in the name of hope.

“You're so damaged,” the man says, and it's almost enough to pull Kise out from the inside. He blinks slowly as if he can drive away the truth behind his eyes, but it remains there, as resplendent as the color of his aurulent gaze. He bows his head and worries his bottom lip between his teeth, a shudder in his ribcage and pain in his chest. He tells himself that he's fine until he believes it, until he drives out the voice in his head that once told him that he's the glitter in the dark.

A firm hand lands on his shoulder and Kise relaxes. He's not going to be abandoned, after all. The scarred hand forces him into a supine position that leaves him stretched across the stains from earlier, now dry and undetectable. The man closes in, coffee and smoke on his breath. He looks like a cardsharp, a real swindler, and Kise drapes an arm around his neck to draw him closer. He's gotten good at picking out the con artists from the club owners and the ringleaders and the bigwigs from the racketeers.

Kise's body is hot and the fine sheen of sweat on his skin catches reflective in the room's low glow. He lets his knees fall open to accommodate the man between his legs, breath hitching when he brushes against his half-hard cock. He massages the tight knot of muscle beneath his fingers and looks at the shadow above him pointedly, brow furrowed.

“Don't love me. Just make it hurt,” he tells him, hips lifting involuntarily for the friction his body craves.

Kise closes his eyes when thick fingers push into his entrance, opening him up with a preamble that promises something greater. He finds himself slipping, falling hard and fast, something that he does often, nowadays. He loses himself to a world that receives humans rather than welcomes them. A place where his fingers grasp at cimmerian shade but close on nothing but air. A world where thorny branches slice through his skin and blood runs in rivulets down his milky thighs. Time is null here and a cold wind blows perpetually. There are no flashbulbs, no cries for his attention, and no names. There's only silence, blessed, beautiful silence.

Kise snaps open his eyes, his gaze blown wide as the man fucks him into orgasm. He can't recall exactly when the stranger traded his fingers for his cock or when he fitted his hand around his throat, but the pleasure that crests through him is all that Kise concerns himself with. His thighs shake and his toes unfurl as the last dregs of impending tension leave his body.

His heart thrums hard in his chest, plays a mantra in his ears, and all at once, he can finally _feel_. He expects hopelessness in his final moments but all that's left is a shred of complacency that spills down his cheek in the shape of a salt-damp ribbon. He claws at the sheets and writhes against the bed but he knows that this last fight is merely compulsory.

He hears the low drag of sound over his sputtering coughs and stunted breaths, a compliment aimed at his beauty, but he's too far gone to care. His gift of self is raped and his soul is in tatters. He squeezes his eyes shut and drifts off into a void, a place where his limbs dance through a land unbeknownst to him. A voice scrapes through his head, one that he thinks he's heard before, and he can suddenly recall the familiar taste of tears.

It's a heavy price to pay for gratification but to Kise, tragedy is everlasting paradise in disguise and he's more than willing to let it take him apart.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
